Hold the Excitement: Pontiac Killed by GM

A requiem for the brand, a timeline of Pontiac history, and a personal recollection.

The killing of Pontiac is analogous to the sudden death of an old but distant friend; you were aware he wasn’t well, but you didn’t think it was as bad as all that. And when the news arrives, you wish you’d done something to help somehow, the regretful—and futile—hand-wringing that so often follows abrupt departures.

To be accurate, the brand’s departure won’t exactly be abrupt. GM’s initial announcement states merely that the division will suspend operations sometime in 2010. That leaves plenty of time to get good and bummed out.

But sentiment has little weight in business, and GM’s current desperate straits mean the company has room for none at all. So we will apparently bid farewell to another of the General’s middle divisions, as Pontiac follows Oldsmobile into the sunset.

The Beginning

Pontiac was very much homegrown by GM, but not, as some historians seem to believe, a rebadged clone of the Oakland Motor Company range. Organized in 1907, Oakland became part of the General Motors empire in 1909, one of the earliest acquisitions of the irrepressible William Crapo Durant, who had established the giant-to-be earlier that same year. It held a solid position in the aspirational product hierarchy set up by GM president Alfred P. Sloan: Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Oakland, Buick, and Cadillac.

But by the mid-1920s, Sloan was worried about a product gap between Chevrolet and Oldsmobile. And so talks moved forward about a brand-new car.

Chief Pontiac

The prescription was for a six-cylinder lineup. The name hadn’t been chosen—GM’s code name was X-car—but as the concept inched toward reality, the Pontiac name crept into internal correspondence.

What was the origin? Was the name chosen, as some say, for the legendary 18th-century Ottawa chief? GM certainly used plenty of feathers and faux Native American schlock at the launch and through the car’s first decade. If tribal lore was indeed the source, it’s a good thing the marketing guys didn’t have to deal with the chief’s real name. Imagine trying to build excitement around a car named Obwandiyag.

Although Chief Pontiac figured prominently in the new car’s marketing, including lending his profile to the hood ornament, a more mundane explanation is plausible: The business foundation for the Oakland Motor Company was the Pontiac Buggy Company in, of course, Pontiac, Michigan. (Pontiac is located in Oakland County.)

Bright Beginnings

The first Pontiac—the Series 6-27—was unveiled at the New York auto show in January 1926. It was offered in two- and four-door sedan models, with a 187-cubic-inch flathead-six delivering a modest 36 or 40 hp (sources are split) at 2400 rpm.

Oakland was nominally the parental division, but most of the engineering was handled by Chevrolet, which supplied most of the hardware as well.

The new car went on sale with a base price of $825, and it was a hit, selling more than 200,000 units in an 18-month run. As initial market response overwhelmed Oakland’s ability to build cars fast enough, a huge Pontiac factory opened in 1927—35 acres, $15 million, and the biggest single construction project in the U.S. that year.

Sloan and his colleagues were ecstatic, although with one asterisk: Pontiac sales immediately eclipsed those of the established Oakland models, making the parent company look much like an afterthought.

The Silver Streak

The Great Depression arrived, and in an industry that diminished by as much as 70 percent, Pontiac, like every other automaker, suffered. But the new make survived, something that could not be said for its progenitor. GM pulled the plug on Oakland at the end of 1931.

Oakland’s only legacy to Pontiac was a 251-cubic-inch V-8, rated for 85 hp and distinguished by a one-piece engine-block casting, preceding Ford’s famous flathead V-8 by a year. Pontiac adopted it for 1932. But the new V-8 was a flop and disappeared from the Pontiac inventory after one year. Pontiac substituted a 223-cubic-inch, 77-hp inline-eight in 1933, an engine that would remain in the lineup in some form until 1954.

Another Depression effect at GM was making sheetmetal common among the various divisions. Does this sound familiar? The brands were distinguished primarily by their front and rear styling. But in 1935, Pontiac made this work with its “Silver Streak” look, which entailed liberal applications of chrome, an approach that lasted into the 1950s.

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